The largest object ever recovered from the wreck site of the RMS Titanic, a four-porthole section of the ship itself, was salvaged in 1998 and goes on sale this week as part of a lot of Titanic artifacts.Handout RMS Titanic, Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions, Inc.
/ Postmedia News

A woman's bracelet with Amy written with 26 gemstones is one of the items that goes on sale this week as part of a lot of Titanic artifacts.Handout RMS Titanic, Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions, Inc.
/ Postmedia News

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There's a ghostly deck chair and a heart-wrenching locket, a poignant last letter to a young man's parents, a White Star Line candy dish and a massive hunk of the doomed vessel's hull — anything and everything with a genuine link to the world's most famous shipwreck catastrophe seems to be up for grabs in time for the 100th anniversary of the RMS Titanic's first and last voyage.

But would-be buyers harbouring hopes of owning a piece of Titanic history might find their plans going the same way as the great luxury liner itself — lost in a sea of competitive bidders. And given the feverish interest in Titanic-themed auctions ahead of Saturday's centenary of the April 1912 tragedy, it may be the bank accounts of winning bidders that are ultimately headed for a shocking plunge.

The biggest sale ever of Titanic relics is set to take place Wednesday in Richmond, Virginia, where more than 5,000 objects retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean seabed since the wreck's discovery in 1985 are to be auctioned by Guernsey's as a single collection — as ordered by a U.S. court — to preserve its historical integrity.

"Titanic is slowly being consumed by iron-eating microbes on the sea floor and, at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will be only a memory," Premier Exhibitions and RMS Titanic Inc.'s Mark Sellers, chairman of the firms that controversially plucked objects from the wreck site and later toured them at commercial exhibits, said in announcing the sale earlier this year.

"Many of the artifacts we've brought up from the site would have disintegrated and been lost forever had this company not risked life and limb, and spent millions of dollars and countless hours to raise and rehabilitate them using cutting-edge conservation techniques," Sellers said. "After all of these efforts, we have determined that the time has come for us to transfer ownership of this collection to a steward who is able to continue our efforts and will preserve and honour her legacy."

The estimated $180-million value of those items — which include an iconic bronze cherub from the ship's grand staircase, a man's bowler hat and a 17-tonne, four-porthole section of the ship itself that was hauled up from the deep in 1998 — will disqualify average history buffs from competing with museums, major corporations and billionaire collectors for the ultimate Titanic treasure.

But beginning next week, on the 100th anniversary of a Canadian ship's departure from Halifax to retrieve bodies and debris after the Titanic's sinking, another 180 objects linked to the tragedy will be sold by New Hampshire-based RR Auction.

Many of those items were recovered by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett, the Nova Scotia cable-repair vessel that was dispatched to the wreck site on April 17, 1912, two days after the Titanic sank about 600 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland.

The Mackay-Bennett's crew recovered more than 300 drowned victims of the tragedy, along with scores of items left floating on the surface of the Atlantic — detritus that would become treasured souvenirs for grieving relatives and eventually coveted collectibles in the antique market.

Among the highlighted objects is one of Titanic's wooden deck chairs, which might have given a doomed passenger something to cling to while awaiting rescue, briefly, before the icy water took hold.

"The official logbook of the Mackay-Bennett records the recovery of multiple deck chairs from the Titanic wreckage over a period of several days, as well as their repair by the ship's carpenter, suggesting that some of them were intended to be made functional again," said Bobby Livingston, vice-president of RR Auction, in announcing the week-long online sale that runs April 19-26.

"Deck chairs aboard the great liners represented the epitome of luxury and opulence," notes the auction house. "Passengers would often relax against a cooling ocean spray, sometimes covered with a blanket while attended to by the ever-present and attentive deck stewards."

RR Auction spokesman Mike Graff told Postmedia News that the Titanic disaster is "comparable to a Pearl Harbor, a 9/11. It's that much of a great tragedy, so unexpected — the loss of that many lives in one quick moment."

More than 1,500 people perished. Among them was Edward Herbert Keeping, 33-year-old valet to Philadelphia businessman and hotelier George Dunton Widener, who also died.

When the sailors aboard the Mackay-Bennett found Keeping's body, one of the possessions they also recovered was a gold locket that held pictures of the American man's wife and daughter.

Returned to his widow, who later placed a picture of her lost husband in the locket, the object described by Livingston as "one of the most impressive artifacts with direct ties to the Titanic" is now being offered for sale by Keeping's great-granddaughter, and is expected to fetch at least $5,000.

"That locket is probably one of the most fascinating items — it's the first time it's on the market, and it was retrieved by that (Canadian) boat," said Graff. "I think Halifax has been most touched by all of this, because they had to do so much of the cleanup."

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